The desk also featured a circular pane of white glass inset into its birch surface, which allowed the 5-by-7-inch pieces of paper used in storyboarding to be illuminated from behind. Designed to face a wall, the desk’s 11.5 square feet of surface area could be tilted forward to face the artist. In contrast, Story Desks were smaller, more private spaces. Drawers and cubbies on all sides added to its role as a hub for collaboration, and there were even stainless-steel-pipe footrests under both of the table’s wide sides, as if to afford the artists presenting their work the same level of ergonomic courtesy as the directors they reported to.Ī Disney artist working on Fantasia (1940) at a Kem Weber designed Background Desk. 21-as it was officially labeled on Weber’s blueprints-to rough out the sequence of scenes in the film, creating the roadmap animators would subsequently follow.Ī key characteristic of the Director’s Table was its intentional placement in the middle of an office, so that numerous animators could gather around it-that’s why the table has the word “Center” in its official name. After an initial round of meetings with the film’s director at either a full size or smaller version of a Director’s Center Table, the storyboard artist would head off to his Story Men’s Sketch Desk, UNIT No. From a production standpoint, the process began at the Director’s Table and Story Desk. Peterson’s company manufactured all of the Weber furniture for Disney’sĮach piece of Weber furniture had a different role to play in creating the trademark Disney magic. Kem Weber (kneeling), Walt Disney (in hat), and Howard Petersen in 1939. It wasn’t until I was working on the book and got a glimpse of the original Weber blueprints that I found out it was actually called a Compact Animator’s Desk.” After a couple of years, I asked for something ‘a little more compact.’ For the next 30 years, I thought I was sitting at an assistant’s desk because it was so much smaller. “When I started at Disney in May of 1984 on ‘The Black Cauldron,’” Bossert says, “they showed me to an office and said, ‘Here’s your desk.’ It was the basic, Kem Weber Animator’s Desk, big, wide, and solid as a rock, like sitting at a monument. Naturally, Weber received a steady stream of input from Disney, but Weber also solicited ideas from one of the greatest animators of the 20th century, Frank Thomas, who used the prototype of the desk he helped Weber design-built by the Peterson Showcase & Fixture Company-to complete his work on “Pinocchio.”Īs an animator, Bossert knows these desks well. Bossert offers fresh insights into the Disney-Weber relationship, particularly in the way it affected the half-dozen or so different desk styles Weber designed for character animators, layout artists, and animation directors. In his latest book, Kem Weber: Mid-Century Furniture Designs for the Disney Studios, author and former Disney animator David A. Collection of Tony Anselmo photo by Frank Anzalone. Even the birch plywood desks these animators sat at were customized for their tasks, whether they were sketching storyboards, executing the entry-level grunt work of the “inbetweener,” or painting backgrounds.ĭisney animator office with Kem Weber furniture, courtesy The Walt Disney Family Museum. Weber’s low-rise buildings, which quickly filled with the company’s roughly 800 employees, were sited to maximize northern exposure, ensuring optimal natural light for Disney’s small army of animators. Together, they created a work environment that was designed expressly for animators. As a builder, though, Walt Disney may have been even more ambitious, spending much of 1938 and ’39 consulting with his new studio’s architect, Kem Weber.

“It was the basic, Kem Weber Animator’s Desk, big, wide, and solid as a rock, like sitting at a monument.”Īs a filmmaker, Disney always had big plans. But even before the financial success of “Snow White” was assured, Disney had pushed “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia,” into production at his company’s cramped Hyperion Studios-hence the need for a new animation facility in Burbank. At the time, Disney’s first full-length animated feature, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” was on its way to grossing $8 million at the box office, a new record for a motion picture. In the summer of 1938, Walt Disney put $10,000 down on 51 acres of land in Burbank, California, for a new animation studio. Courtesy of Mark Kirkland photo © Dave Bossert.

Ollie Johnston’s Kem Weber Compact Animator’s Desk.

Kem weber animation desk